A satanic display in the Iowa capitol has split two pastors who serve as legislators.
Controversy continues after an organization describing itself as the Satanic Temple of Iowa erected an altar depicting a silver ram’s head on a mannequin adorned with a red cape and surrounded by candles and flowers. The statue also holds a red wreath with an inverted pentagram.
Just days ago a former US Navy pilot decapitated the statue. Michael Cassidy has been charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief, the Iowa Department of Public Safety said.
Photo: Rep. Dunwell Twitter.
The act hasn’t abated the disagreement over whether the statue should stay or go among two state legislators.
Iowa state Rep. Jon Dunwell, a Republican and pastor also serves as assistant majority leader, said that although he disagrees personally with what the display represents, he doesn’t believe the government should be getting involved. “For me, I would rather have an evil, blasphemous display or no display at all than have the state dictate what they think is appropriate,” he said.
Dunwell described himself as “a Bible-believing, crazy evangelical Christian” but said that while he brings his faith and everything else about him to his role as a legislator, he doesn’t believe it’s his job to impose his faith on anyone else. “I have the freedom to express my faith and freedom to talk about it,” he said. “It influences my decisions, but it is not something that I say, ‘You have to have my faith and only my faith can be expressed.'”
Dunwell’s fellow state Rep. Brad Sherman, who also is a Republican and a pastor, took a different view on the topic, arguing in a newsletter last week that there is potential legal recourse by which satanic displays could be prohibited on state-owned property. “The outrage and disgust for this satanic display is widespread, but few people think there is much that can be legally done about it because of free speech and freedom of religion,” Sherman wrote. “However, I disagree.”
Citing the preamble to the 1857 Iowa State Constitution, which established the state on the basis of a belief in a “Supreme Being” and “dependence on Him for a continuation of those blessings,” Sherman described any legal interpretation that would afford Satan and God the same religious expression as “twisted and tortured.”
“Such a legal view not only violates the very foundation of our State Constitution, but it offends the God upon whom we depend,” he said. “Either He is God or He is not.”
Claiming that it violates the Iowa State Constitution, Sherman called on Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds to remove the “blasphemous display.” He also called for the adoption of clarifying legislation that would prohibit satanic displays on state property and allow the Ten Commandments.
In the last several years, statues have been erected in other capitols as well.
–Dwight Widaman
